I owe Sir Keir Starmer, the new Labour MP for Holborn and St Pancras, a great deal. He is an old friend of my wife's, and it's probably true to say that I would not be married to her without his involvement in a case I helped with when he was a junior barrister and I was a young composer moonlighting as a solicitor's outdoor clerk.
In his capacity as Shadow Brexit Secretary Sir Keir is pressing the Government for parliamentary scrutiny of negotiations. This is fine until you start to think about the practicalities.
In any negotiation the sensible starting position is miles away from where you're willing to end up. Britain's opening position in Brexit talks will bear only superficial resemblance to the negotiated result. If I'm right about this, what will be the point of parliamentary approval or discussion? What attitude should HMG take? "Don't worry chaps, this isn't what we really think. This is just our opening gambit, and we'll settle for anything which gives us full access to the single market"? Or should the Government have to defend a position to which it has no intention of sticking?
No doubt when agreement finally limps into view there will be calls for Parliamentary endorsement. So what do we do if the Government is unable to command a majority? Do we go to Mrs Merkel and say, "Sorry Angela, but you know this deal we've spent years negotiating - we're going to have to start again because parliament doesn't like it"?
Even if Parliament did approve a draft agreement, what if the Lords, stuffed with Lib Dem peers and overwhelmingly hostile to Brexit, keep the issue ping-ponging back and forth with an eye on the 2020 election and the chance to scupper Leave once and for all?
Parliamentary approval at any stage is unworkable where not actually counter-productive. Parliament wants to get involved because even Tory MPs cannot bear to be sidelined on the issue.
But hold on, you say, Parliament is the law-making body in this country. How can the Government do something as fundamental as this without getting Parliamentary endorsement? Well there's the Royal Prerogative, for starters. But in any event the Tories have a mandate. Their 2015 manifesto said that they'd have an In-Out referendum. If Leave won, who did Remainers - inside and outside Parliament - think was going to handle negotiations? The Greens? The Lib Dems? The inference that it would be the Tories doing so is the only reasonable one available.
As for Labour, how can they argue that they deserve the right to interfere with a process they didn't mention in their manifesto and would have stopped outright if they could?
The Tories have a mandate to secure Brexit on the best terms they possibly can according to their own judgment. Politicians and pundits may not like this, but it is the only practicable way available.
Why? Please consider what would happen if, at any stage in the process, there was a vote and the Government was defeated. That would be because they were outnumbered by Labour, the SNP and the Lib Dems. Did any of those parties promise a referendum if they were elected to govern? No. To be clear, the will of the people, as expressed in both the referendum and in the 2015 general election, would have been thwarted by MPs with no mandate whatsoever in either forum.
The sovereignty of Parliament has been much invoked in the aftermath, as if that institution were the only source of legitimacy, but pardoxically in this situation I can't think of any better way to bring Parliament into disrepute.
Labour's new Shadow Secretary of State for Exiting the EU has made the mistake of assuming that because there's something unsatisfactory about the Government's mandate for the specifics of Brexit (and clearly it's not ideal to say the least) there must somewhere be a perfect way of dealing with it. There may be (although I can't think of one), but the way Sir Keir proposes is actually less democratic and therefore worse.
Of course, that doesn't mean that Parliamentary scrutiny won't happen. It will. The Tory majority is too small, and God knows the party has enough dim and fractious MPs. Brexit terms will be debated in Parliament, the whole business will be a dog's breakfast of interference and we will get a worse deal as a result.
Many years ago I used to play 5-a-side football against Sir Keir. My abiding memory is of his footsteps approaching at speed: if you got the ball, he would be coming, and if you lingered long enough he would take it off you. I've got no doubt that Theresa May will hear his footsteps coming too, for Keir is a person whose brains and charisma put him in a different league to any Labour politician since Blair.
Brains and charisma aren't the only qualities a politician needs though. Amongst many others, there's also judgment.
PS You can see, incidentally, the way this is going to go by Newsnight's report last night that HMG is willing to pay very significant contributions to the EU in order to retain unfettered single market access. HMG's negotiating position is going to be undermined at every turn, and not just by Parliament.
PPS The financial markets have a reputation for seeing straight to the unsentimental core of politics. How is this? A sixth-former could see that May's Hard Brexit rehetoric is merely the outer skin of the onion. If I had dollars I'd be buying as many pounds as I could afford. At some point it's going to occur to currency traders that maybe the government's position is not quite as tough as it looks.
